Cub scouting

Three attracted a crowd of 300 Saturday, when a family of bears trundled into town.

Hundreds of people gathered at the intersection of King Avenue and Hemlock Street in Waynesboro, to catch a glimpse of a black bear and her two cubs dozing in a tree.

People began calling authorities around 1 a.m. saying they’d seen a bear roaming Main Street, Waynesboro police Corp. J.M. Short said. By 8 a.m., the mother and her cubs had climbed into a King Avenue tree to nap, Short said.

It soon turned into a community event, people gathering, cameras pointing to the top of the tree and catchy music blaring from a nearby home.

Latoya Taylor, of King Avenue, called relatives, telling them to hurry over.

“This only happens on the Discovery Channel,” Taylor said. “You can’t pause your DVR for things like this. And it’s Saturday! We don’t have anything better to do.”

Short said he called half of the Saturday police force along with the Waynesboro Fire Department to ensure safety.

Authorities waited until a game warden arrived to tranquilize the bears.

Neighbors helped, providing mattresses to pillow the bears’ fall as they tumbled from the tranquilizer shots.

“As soon as the last one hit the ground everybody left,” Short said. “I don’t think it was 10 minutes and there wasn’t soul around.”

Saturday’s was the second bear sighting in Waynesboro this year. Numbering about 900,000 in North America and prominent in the Blue Ridge Mountains, black bears sometimes venture to residential areas in search of food, especially in open trash cans, according to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Black bears grow to as large as 7 feet from nose to tail and females may weigh as much as 250 pounds, according to the Game and Inland Fisheries Web site.

The agency advises people to keep a respectful distance when they see black bears in their community. People should not gather around and make the bear feel threatened. The department suggests making sure trash can lids are sealed tightly to avoid bear confrontations.

“The best thing is for people to not do what they did,” Short said. “They’re not cute little bears, they’re wild animals and if you just leave them alone they’ll go away themselves.”